SHARONVILLE – Wednesday did not turn out the way any of the Versailles golfers had hoped it would.
Junior Connor VanSkyock was gunning for am individual state bid at the Division II boys district championship at Glenview Golf Course in Sharonville, while the VHS girls team was trying to make it four years in a row as a state qualifier in the Division II girls district tournament at Pipestone in Miamisburg.
Neither were successful.
VanSkyock shot an 84 on the 6,291-yard East and South courses at Glenview finishing in a tie for 28th place among the 72 golfers at the tournament.
“I’m disappointed,” VanSkyock said. “I didn’t start off too strong with a double and a triple (bogey) early. It kind of got better from there, but it just wasn’t good enough.”
It was a rough start for VanSkyock shooting a 44 on the longer East course.
“I came in not really expecting to get out,” VanSkyock said referring the tough competition. “It was more of a learning experience this year and we’ll see what next year brings. But I learned that I can’t count myself out early. I still ended up shooting decent on the back. I’m happy that was able to recover from my score on the front. It was just a couple bad shots today that put me in bad shape and couldn’t get back from it.
“Overall, I’m satisfied with the season,” he continued. “I got out of sectionals and that was one of my goals. I feel like I got better during the season too, but there was a rough patch along the way. I played well enough to get the job done. I felt like I didn’t get up and down as well this year, so that’s something I need to revisit over the summer.”
Only the top three teams and top three individuals not on a qualifying team advanced to next week’s state championships.
The top three teams were Alter (315), Oakwood (318) and Wyoming (320). The top three individuals were Jack Sonne (74) of Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, William McDavid (76) of Urbana and Jake Simpson (76) of Summit Country Day.
“He didn’t do as well as he had hoped,” Versailles coach Shaun VanSkyock said. “But hopefully he gained some experience from this and use it as something he can learn from and maybe improve some stuff in the offseason for next year.
“With the course set up the way it was the rough was very difficult,” he continued. “If you missed the green and were in the rough the ball really sat down and it made it tough to get up and down to save par and he struggled with that a little today. He just had a couple of holes that were bad holes and couldn’t recover from the high numbers.”
Coach also agreed that overall for the season things went pretty well.
“I knew he had high expectations to start the year and things didn’t necessarily go exactly the way he wanted but overall I’m happy with the way the season went,” Coach VanSkyock said. “He would have had to shoot his round of the year to get out today (76), so he’s got some things he knows he needs to work on and if he wants to get that average even lower then he’ll put in the work to get the results he’s hoping for.”
Meanwhile, about 35 miles to the north at Miamisburg’s Pipestone Golf Course, the Lady Tigers were battling to be one of the top three teams to advance to state. Versailles shot a 378, but wound up sixth in the team standings. Wyoming (366), National Trail (376) and Ben Logan (376) were the state-qualifying teams. Both Alter and Carroll also shot 378 as a team ,but held tiebreakers over Versailles. The top three individuals to advance were Mackenzie Donaldson (83) of Carroll, Sydney Mallaley (84) of McNicholas and Meghan Utterdyke (86) of Fenwick.
Individually for Versailles, Morgan Barlage shot an 88, Morgan Heitkamp shot 91, Maddie Durham had 94, Alexis Jay shot 105 and Cayla Batten had a 109.
